


The New Hire

by asocialconstruct



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - College/University, Fluff, Institutional Racism, M/M, Recreational Drug Use, Rugby, college professor au more precisely
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-01
Updated: 2016-02-01
Packaged: 2018-05-17 14:12:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5873542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asocialconstruct/pseuds/asocialconstruct
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The college AU where everyone's professors instead of students.  Ridiculous fluff.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The New Hire

Sam recognizes the new hire after the second time he's lapped, and Sam needs to send a thank you note to everyone on that hiring committee because goddamn that ass is fine.

The fifth lap, Sam revises the thank you note to a fuck-you-for-hiring-douchebags note. The seventh, that ass is still fine, but Sam sits his ass down to watch the new geology hire pass him by. View's better sitting down, anyway.

View's even better a few minutes later when the new hire staggers to a stop and sticks out his hand to shake. Blond beard, blond hair, Sam would climb that like a tree if he could stand up.

“Sam, English,” Sam says without getting up, because hope springs eternal and the new hire has a water bottle with a _Brooklyn is for lovers_ rainbow heart sticker on it. It's late enough that students are starting to walk across campus, so Sam doesn't objectify too much, but he objectifies a little. It still feels like summer, but here they are with class two days away.

“Steve. I'm the new hire in geology,” the new hire says.

“Yeah, I sort of put that together,” Sam says, getting off his ass finally. “Not a lot of scientists in this town with perfect hair and perfect teeth, you know? What do you work on?”

“Arctic sea ice. Makes for good hiking in the summer, you know?” Steve says, because he's one of those. Maybe queer, maybe just obnoxiously wholesome. “You?”

Sam clears his throat. “Queer theory and disability studies, representations of veterans in movies and contemporary lit.”

“Can someone tell me where the registrar's office is?” Natasha calls from her car, rolling up to the curb behind Steve. “My English professor's too hot, I need to drop the class.”

Sam sighs. “I'll see you around?” he says to Steve, reaching out to shake his hand again. “Writing date.”

Sam escapes to the relative safety of Nat's car, to the promise of a shower at the campus gym and the next two hours having her pick apart every second of the interaction while Sam tries to finish that goddamn fellowship proposal. He can practically feel the wholesomeness of Steve's handshake as he closes the car door.

“The new hire in geology,” Nat says as soon as she pulls away from the curb, almost clipping a student who didn't get out of the crosswalk fast enough.

“The new hire,” Sam says.

“Is he gay?” Nat asks, and he can see her looking in the rearview.

“Didn't ask,” Sam says, because she always does. She just smiles at him.

* * *

“He's gay,” Natasha announces the next night at trivia, yelling the good news over the music at the bar. Sam's definitely getting too old, because it's too loud to tell what it is and he wouldn't like it even if he could recognize it.

“Great,” Bucky yells back, because it's the night before classes start and he's drunk. He leans into Sam's space, all beer breath and those stupid pretty eyelashes. “D'you think I should ask him to coffee or brunch first, Sam?”

“I'm in the sex desert, Barnes!” Sam yells, because Bucky hasn't been an option since grad school. “You can't do this to me, I've been wandering for forty years, do you have any idea how hard it is to meet gay men who aren't eighty or married in this town?”

“You've got me,” Bucky says.

“You're bi, doesn't count,” Sam says. Nat laughs behind her hand and flags down the trivia host for their score sheets.

“That's bi erasure,” Bucky yells. “You're supposed to be a safe space, we did safe space training together—“

“I could sleep with him, that would solve both your problems,” Nat says without looking up from where she's putting their team name on the score sheet.

Bucky bangs his mostly empty pint glass on the table, shouting over the music. “By the power vested in me by the ghosts of all the dead trustees of this mid-tier liberal arts college, I hearby revoke your gender studies degree, from now on you can only write books about the aesthetics of Faulkner—”

Sam leans over Bucky and ignores the fate worse than death being pronounced on him. “Nat, come on, I thought we were bros,” Sam yells. “You owe me for trying to set me up with that guy in accounting. And you said he was gay.”

“He is, but it would solve your problems,” Nat yells back. “And you said Jarvis was charming.”

“I was being nice!” Sam yells, and Bucky's an asshole because he's scrolling through the new hire's Facebook and Academia on his phone. A bunch of papers on thaw rates of biomatter preserved in sea ice and nothing on Facebook a hiring committee wouldn't want to see, which is to say nothing. Sam knows because he's not a googlestalking lightweight like Bucky. “Charming is the opposite of bang me like a screen door in a hurricane, Nat! Don't leave me in the desert!”

“Alright, phones away, folks,” the trivia host says over all of them, mic cutting out the music. “Three rules: no phones during rounds, no yelling the answers, and no correcting the host even if you have a PhD in the thing, that includes you Dr. Barnes. First round, US Presidents.”

“That was one time!” Bucky yells back.

* * *

 

Bucky and Nat show up to Sam's office the second day of classes, and from the cat got the canary look they've both got, they've found Steve's office. Sam lets himself be propelled along to the converted former dorm geology is sharing with physics until the new construction's done.

“You're coming to coffee,” Nat says, standing in Steve's doorway. He's been on campus two months and his office still looks empty, bare shelves all along one wall. Sam can't really blame him, seeing as it's a cramped little shoe box that shares a bathroom in a suite with two other offices.

“Nice to meet you?” Steve says, wrinkling his brow like a confused golden retriever. “I have office hours until two, I could meet you then—“

“No one comes to office hours, especially not the first week,” Bucky says. “You're coming to coffee. Bucky, history department, Nat, math and data science. Now we've met.”

Natasha pulls Steve out of his chair with one tiny, perfectly manicured hand and Sam wants to die. “We went through orientation with Sam,” she says. “You're friends with Sam, so you're friends with us now. Your orientation cohort is terrible.”

“They're okay,” Steve says as they propel him out of his office.

“Sitwell, boring and whines to the dean already,” Nat says, ticking them off on her fingers. “Stark, never stops talking about himself. Rumlow, philosophy, enough said.”

“Stark is a little much,” Steve says.

* * *

“I ended up next to Stark in the lineup for convocation and my god, he wouldn't shut up,” Bucky says while they wait in line for coffee at the campus center. “I wanted to go back in time and murder his parents, do you know what he said to me? He said history's not a real discipline, we already know everything that happened.”

Steve smiles at that, but his attention's clearly not on all the powdered creamer he just dumped into his sour coffee. Sam pays for his and sidles up to reach past him for the raw sugar; Steve's wearing a perfectly tweed blazer and skinny tie that screams _cool professor_ , and Sam's glad he went for the bow tie and sweater vest instead of his own skinny tie that screams _I am anxious about my tenure review_.

Steve smells like Old Spice.

“That's nothing,” Nat says, talking over her shoulder to Bucky as she shoulders between Sam and Steve for the creamer. “I was next to Rumlow, he wanted to talk about the aesthetics of pain and utility when he wasn't waxing rhapsodic about Princeton.”

“Princeton,” Bucky scoffs. “Like it's hard to get into Princeton. My dick's gotten into Princeton,” he says, and highfives Nat.

“He's got a degree from Columbia too,” Nat says.

“Yeah, and now he needs to get one from America,” Bucky says, and highfives Nat again.

“You stole that from _Community_ ,” Sam says, and Steve laughs into his hand as they find a table. Sam one, Bucky zero.

“Yeah, but like, have you heard Stark go on about fucking Cornell?” Bucky says. “Cornell's not even a fucking Ivy, it's got an ag school.”

“Okay, Indiana State,” Steve says. Steve one, Bucky zero.

“Yeah, Badgers?” Bucky says, because he's as good at googlestalking as Nat is when he puts his mind to it. “Least Terre Haute's got a highway and more than one gay bar—“

“Please, you don't know anything about Madison—“ Steve starts, and Sam starts writing his number on Steve's coffee.

* * *

The next week at trivia, Sam tells Bucky and Nat about his brunch date with Steve. The week after that, he regrets it.

“I had a condom fall out of my pocket in a department meeting!” Sam yells, and the next table over cheers over the music. “My chair almost saw it!”

“You're welcome,” Nat yells back.

“We just want you to be safe, Sam!” Bucky yells, leaning in close enough Sam can feel his warm stubble. “How else are you going to get out of the sex desert?”

“Maybe next time wear a coat with less pockets to put condoms in,” Nat yells.

“Or more,” Bucky yells. “I mean, how far out of the sex desert are you trying to get?”

* * *

“It's Friday, what are you doing still here?” Steve says from Sam's door a couple days later.

“What are you doing here?” Sam says. Because it's that or keep working on this part of the book manuscript that won't come together, and it's hard to want to when Steve's standing in his door looking fine as hell in tight jeans and a fleece vest, like he just rolled in out of the woods instead of teaching two sections of rocks for jocks.

“You smoke?” Steve says, and he flashes a joint from his pocket because of course he does. “I live a couple blocks from campus.”

“Everyone lives a couple blocks from campus,” Sam says. But he starts packing up his man bag, because yeah, it's sort of claustrophobic when he runs into the dean on midnight beer run, but not so bad for mid-afternoon booty call.

* * *

Steve's in college-owned housing for new faculty, one of the neat little stepford houses just off campus the college bought up to discourage house parties too close to the dorms, same as Sam and Bucky and Nat rented their first year. It's cute enough, but it's got a big fenced in yard, sunny and private enough to smoke without being seen by neighbors or students. Steve lays out a flannel blanket and puts goddamn hipster music on his phone, and Sam could bang him right then on the fall leaves.

“So you read romance novels for work,” Steve says, rolling over to prop himself up on one elbow.

“I work on vernacular queer erotic literature,” Sam says.

“So romance novels.” Steve grins at him dopily, sun catching on his beard.

“Yeah, I work on fucking romance novels,” Sam says, throwing a handful of leaves at him. “Like you look at ice cubes all day.”

“That's what I thought it was going to be, you know,” Steve says. “Hiking all day, looking at rocks. Listening to brilliant people,” he says, and he must be pretty baked, because he just keeps staring at Sam after he's said it, like Sam's the only one in that category.

Sam takes his blazer off, warm between the fall sunshine and the weed and the actual lumberjack trying to seduce him. He mashes it into a pillow, lying down next to where Steve's lying with his head pillowed on one arm.

“Is this Brooks Brothers?” Steve says, passing him the joint. “They don't sell the ones with patches any more.”

“Oh, I put those on,” Sam says after a minute, rolling the joint in his fingers. “After the second time security stopped me on campus, I started doing the professor costume thing real hard.”

“They didn't,” Steve says. Sam's pretty baked too, because he only notices just then that Steve's got his hand on Sam's elbow, running his finger tips over the fabric in little circles.

“They did, yeah, of course they did. First time was trying to park for commencement my first year, I was in my fucking regalia and everything.”

“That's terrible. Can I kiss you?” Steve says, and Sam starts laughing, because how can he not.

“Oh my god, I'm sorry,” Steve says, and he's laughing because Sam's laughing, and Sam's laughing because Steve's laughing. “I'm sorry—I just—that's terrible, no one should do terrible things to you,” Steve says, and he says it so earnest Sam finally catches his breath.

“You're high,” Sam says.

“So're you. Can I kiss you?” Steve says again, and that's how Sam ends up walking home with crunched up leaves stuck to the ass of his good slacks and the promise of Netflix and chill.

* * *

Slip up one time and miss trivia for a date, and this is what it gets him. All he'd texted Bucky and Nat was > _busy this week, catch up with you on campus_ , and of course they translated that as > _I am going to have sex for the first time in nine months, please make sure to ruin this_ because they're assholes. He should have known when Nat texted back a thousand winky face ice cream smoochy heart eyes emojis.

So that's how Sam knows, immediately and without a doubt, why Steve's contented post-blowjob snuggling is suddenly interrupted by the entire goddamn rubgy team on his front lawn.

“ _Oh, I used to work in Chicago, at a hardware store—_ “

“No,” Sam says, pushing himself up on elbows.

Steve sits up with him and goddamn the view is nice, the sheets all drunk and pulled around. “What is it?” Steve says as Sam rolls out of bed, hopping into boxers as he goes.

“ _Nail he said and screwed he got, I did but I don't any more!_ ”

“Goddamn ruggers,” Sam says, yanking the window open to let the cold air roll in.

“ _Stamps he wanted, licked he got, I did but I don't any more!_ ”

“Go home before I call your damn coach!” Sam yells out the window mostly naked, but it doesn't much matter because the ruggers are streaking.

“Can I get an extension on the paper due Monday, Dr. Wilson?” someone yells back.

“No! Go read Foucault and think about what you've done!” Sam yells, and slams the window shut.

“ _A ruler he wanted, twelve inches he got, I did but I don't any more!_ ” the ruggers sing through the window, but at least it's quieter. Sam grabs his phone off the dresser and snaps a picture for Bucky and Nat.

> _which one of you is responsible_ , Sam texts them, attaching a blurry picture of naked ruggers on his lawn.

> _There may have been extra credit on performative working class masculinities_ , Bucky texts back, and Nat texts about eighty winky face thumbs up heart smoochy face icons. Sam throws his phone across the room and lets Steve pull him back to bed.


End file.
